Chapter 126: Chapter 112: The Sudden Form Two
[You are attempting to create ’Form Two’.]
[Creation complete.]
[Please name ’Form Two’.]
Zheng Xiu froze. "Huh?"
’Isn’t this process going a little too fast?’
A thin ray of light cut through the sky, pierced the Blood Crow, and the bird fell to the ground, motionless.
After a moment of dead silence.
"Murder! It’s murder!"
The street devolved into chaos, with horses rearing and people scattering. The common folk were scared out of their wits.
Only then did Zheng Xiu emerge from the house with a large hole in its wall, dragging the half-dead blind man behind him. As he walked, he apologized to a young, naked couple huddled together dumbstruck on the heated bed, "Sorry, so sorry. Please, continue. On such a beautiful night and auspicious day, I wish you a healthy baby soon, ha."
As he spoke, Zheng Xiu tossed two bloody eyeballs to the ground, took a step to each side, and stomped on them, crushing them one by one.
SQUISH! SQUISH!
The round eyeballs flattened into discs under his soles. Only then did Zheng Xiu look down, staring quizzically at his own hands.
He was still hung up on that hurried "process," unable to make sense of it.
With a thought, a cold glint circled down from the sky and flew back into Zheng Xiu’s hand.
It was a small Engraving Knife.
The Engraving Knife’s design was rather bizarre. The blade was pitch-black, but the handle was white, with raised ridges that looked like several fingers twisted together. A blood-red jewel was embedded at the end of the handle, and inside it, the character for "Two" was faintly visible.
By midnight, the sounds of fighting in the streets had gradually subsided.
The residents of Jiayang City bolted their doors and hid inside, trembling.
A pharmacy called "Renxin House" had its doors shut and lights out; it was closed for the night.
A Mighty Man was BANGING on the shop’s door. The elderly owner, a man over fifty with sleep in his eyes, was about to curse him out when Zheng Xiu politely explained that someone at home was gravely ill and needed medicine.
The old man’s anger immediately dissipated. Besides, the Mighty Man had a kind face and was extraordinarily handsome, making it hard to stay mad at him. So, he lit a lamp and started preparing the medicine for him.
Zheng Xiu had specifically gone home to equip [Medical Principles].
He tossed the Dice, and the faint, jumbled, and indistinguishable medicinal scents in the pharmacy transformed into lines of fine text before his eyes.
This allowed Zheng Xiu to identify the herbs inside the drawers just by their scent, right through the wood.
Before the doctor could even ask about the patient’s symptoms, Zheng Xiu began to list the ingredients one by one.
"Hyoscyamus niger,"
"Sophora root,"
"Belladonna,"
"Datura,"
"Bitter Mountain Ginseng,"
The old doctor felt more and more uneasy as he gathered the herbs. When Master Zheng added, "And a little bit of Aconite to enhance the flavor," the old doctor’s hand trembled, and he couldn’t help but ask, "Forgive my ignorance, but... what kind of prescription is this?"
Aconite. Poisonous and hallucinogenic.
"Hm, it’s a folk remedy called Dream of Spring," Zheng Xiu sighed. "My older brother is having a bout of depression. He needs a strong medicine. We have to fight poison with poison."
"I’ve never heard of such a folk remedy."
"The one who created the prescription is the Divine Doctor Situ Yong, also known as ’He Who Revives the Living Dead.’ I wonder if you’ve heard of him, sir."
"So it was him! Forgive my disrespect!"
The old man seemed to believe him. At first glance, the prescription looked nonsensical, even poisonous. But on closer inspection, there was more to it than met the eye.
At Zheng Xiu’s insistence, ten doses of the medicine were decocted down into a single portion. The Mighty Painter’s first foray into practicing medicine and prescribing drugs was, at last, complete.
Carrying the warm "Dream of Spring," Zheng Xiu mused, ’The capable ones are always the busiest,’ as he returned to the Great Night Treasure Pavilion.
In a room on the second floor, the blind man’s eyes had been gouged out, leaving two empty, bloody sockets that were a horrifying sight. A rag was stuffed in his mouth, and his whole body was covered in blood, a truly miserable picture.
Seeing Zheng Xiu return, Yue Yan shook her head. "He won’t say anything."
Feng Bei’s gaze fell curiously on the small gourd in Zheng Xiu’s hand.
Without a word, Zheng Xiu pulled the rag from the blind man’s mouth, pinched his jaw open, and poured the concentrated "Dream of Spring" from the gourd down his throat.
While they waited for Dream of Spring to take effect, Yue Yan curiously asked what kind of Miracle Technique the trio of cripples had used.
Feng Bei was silent for a moment, then lowered her head.
She hadn’t had a chance to see it.
She had instantly killed the opponent the moment she acted.
Yue Yan’s question made Feng Bei feel like it was her fault.
Zheng Xiu, however, described the fight that had taken place in someone else’s house, right in front of a married couple’s bed.
This blind man was different from the one they had encountered at the Immortal Maiden Temple.
The blind man at the Immortal Maiden Temple could strip people of their sight.
But when this blind man opened his eyes, his body simply vanished from before Zheng Xiu’s eyes.
In short, invisibility.
As long as you made eye contact with him, you couldn’t see him.
Yue Yan clucked her tongue in amazement. "Then how did you catch him?"
This time, it was hard for Zheng Xiu to bluff his way out. After hemming and hawing for a moment, he could only answer honestly, "Intuition. I felt he was over there, so I reached out." As he spoke, Zheng Xiu extended two fingers, mimicking the motion of gouging out eyes. In truth, he had equipped the [Intuition] Trait at the time. When [Intuition] triggered, he had reached into an empty space, and the man’s face just happened to move right into his hand, allowing him to pluck out both eyeballs.
His [Intuition], having been raised to a Masterful level, was nearly a form of "Prediction." Zheng Xiu could perceive his opponent’s moves in advance and react accordingly. Moreover, its trigger rate was extremely high. It was simple, practical, and unpretentious. No matter which Incarnation he used, [Intuition] was now a must-have Trait.
Yue Yan and Dou Xie both scoffed, thinking to themselves, ’This Senior Zheng doesn’t see us as his own people. He possesses a special Miracle Technique but isn’t willing to talk about it.’
As the group was reviewing the Miracle Technique combination of the crippled trio, the head of Jiayang’s Great Night Treasure Pavilion—a retired old Night Guard who called himself Uncle Fu—finally came up to the second floor, his forehead beaded with sweat.
The commotion on the street had been immense. The local Ye Weiyang was responsible for quelling the disturbance caused by these big shots from the north and handling the aftermath.
Upon arriving at the scene, Uncle Fu had been given a fright. At first, what shocked and bewildered him was wondering just what kind of Miracle Technique or weapon could have created a scene that looked like it had been bombarded by Siege Equipment.
The bluestone-paved street had a trench half a man’s width plowed through it by the blind man. An innocent house had a large hole smashed through its wall, its beams were broken, and half the roof had collapsed. The two adjacent houses were also damaged to some extent. This had cost their Ye Weiyang a fair bit of money in compensation.
When Uncle Fu learned that the culprit responsible for destroying a street and three houses was actually just a single punch from this handsome Mighty Man, he was dumbfounded.
The blind man currently had a collapsed left skull, and blood was gushing from his two eyes. He was, barely, still alive—and this was the result of the Mighty Man holding back.
Yue Yan and Dou Xie found the Mighty Man’s brute strength unbelievable. Even if he had claimed his Miracle Technique was "Brute force creates miracles," they wouldn’t have doubted him in the slightest.
"Why are you all looking at me like that?"
Everyone in the room, except for Feng Bei, was staring at him as if he were a monster, making Zheng Xiu feel a little uncomfortable.
Fortunately, the "Dream of Spring" poured into the blind man’s mouth finally lived up to expectations and took effect. The struggling man grew quiet, his gaze lost focus, and a mixture of blood and saliva dribbled from the corners of his mouth.
From the looks of it, his mind had been broken.
